From a purely editorial point of view: What does the marijuana plant have to do with the snake bite? That's... really awkward and unneeded in the story. This is a snake bites man, not man grows weed story.

The marijuana is not really pertinent, just interesting. Smart editors include that, dumb ones don't. This is just a thought, maybe the liberal editors don't include it to not distract from the liberal template that Walmart is bad. And maybe the straight editors and the SMART liberal ones do include it because it will draw readers.

You do not want to be bitten by a venomous snake. Antivenin for a rattler runs $900 a vial and for a bite from an adult snake, treatment can require 20 or more vials. The stuff needs refrigeration and has a short shelf life. It is difficult to produce- you have to milk a snake and give the venom to a sheep which in turn produces antibodies to harvest and process. PETA is not happy with you when you harass the snake or the sheep. So hospitals are often reluctant to use it- this poor guy was sent home because the hospital determined incorrectly that this was a 'dry bite', and if it wasn't the snake was small enough not to cause serious harm. The guy got home and his hand had swollen the size of a cantaloupe.

You do not want to be bitten by a venomous snake. Antivenin for a rattler runs $900 a vial and for a bite from an adult snake, treatment can require 20 or more vials.

Or you can pull the feathers off the breast of a live chicken and lay it on the wound to suck out the poison. Or so my grandmother, who grew up in a sod house in Texas, told me. Of course, she also said she had no idea if it worked ;)

The snake was probably packed in with the mulch accidentally at the source, and just managed to escape just in time to bite the stoner.

This isn't uncommon, it's just noteworthy that it happened at a WalMart and the BBC chose to pick it up. A client of mine runs a company that does decorative pine-straw mulching for golf courses, shopping malls, gated communities, etc. His workers find snakes, dead and alive, embedded in the bales regularly.

Something similar happened to me. I once found a whole mummified cat embedded in a bale of alfalfa hay.

chuck said...Or you can pull the feathers off the breast of a live chicken and lay it on the wound to suck out the poison. Or so my grandmother, who grew up in a sod house in Texas, told me. Of course, she also said she had no idea if it worked ;) Just one of the odd snakebite cures she had heard about as a girl.

Now you tell me!

For the longest time I thought that was the method to become full professor with tenure at Harvard Law School.